The medical diagnostics industry is a critical element of today's healthcare infrastructure. At present, however, in vitro diagnostic analyses, no matter how routine, have become a bottleneck in patient care. There are several reasons for this. First, many diagnostic analyses can only be done with highly specialized equipment that is both expensive and only operable by trained clinicians. Such equipment may be found in only a few locations—often just one in any given urban area. This requires hospitals to send out samples for analyses to these locations, thereby incurring shipping costs and transportation delays, and possibly even sample loss or mishandling. Second, the equipment in question is typically not available “on-demand” but instead runs in batches, thereby delaying the processing time for many samples as they must wait for a machine to reach capacity before they can be run.
Understanding that diagnostic assays on biological samples may break down into several key steps, it is often desirable to automate one or more steps. For example, a biological sample, such as those obtained from a patient, can be used in nucleic acid amplification assays, in order to amplify a target nucleic acid (e.g., DNA, RNA, or the like) of interest. Once amplified, the presence of a target nucleic acid, or amplification product of a target nucleic acid (e.g., a target amplicon) reactor can be detected, wherein the presence of a target nucleic acid and/or target amplicon is used to identify and/or quantify the presence of a target (e.g., a target microorganism or the like). Often, nucleic acid amplification assays involve multiple steps, which can include nucleic acid extraction, nucleic acid amplification, and detection. It is desirable to automate certain steps of these processes.
There is a need for a method and apparatus for carrying out molecular diagnostic assays on multiple samples in parallel, with or without amplification of target nucleic acids, and detection on a prepared biological samples. The system may be configured for high throughput, and operation in a commercial reference laboratory or at the point of care, thereby eliminating the need to send the sample out to a specialized facility.